Four Horsemen

The Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse, as they were known, included Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. This is a distinct reference to the Book of Revelation within the Bible wherein the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are mentioned. Each of these men were philosophers and authors that were self-professed atheists. The term was coined at a public discussion that involved the four. It was largely due to this debate that these philosophers were said to be New Atheists, as they all remained committed to questioning the usefulness of religion in the world.

This lengthy discussion and debate between the four took place in 2007 and centered primarily on religion and the effects of debating about religion and putting up criticisms against it. The debate went in-depth about how religious people from around the world have been offended in the past due to the criticisms presented by each of these atheists. At one point, Hitchens says "There's no way in which the charge against us can be completely avoided, because what we say does offend the core of a very serious religious person." To this, Dawkins enumerated on the subject by stating "I'm fascinated by the contrast between the amount of offenses taken by religion and the amount of offense that people take against really anything else, like artistic taste, your taste in music, your politics; you can be far, far more rude about such things."

When directly countering the claim that Hitchens and the other philosophers at the debate are too focused on criticizing religion, Daniel Dennett noted that "There are plenty of people taking care of pointing out the good stuff and the benign stuff, and we can acknowledge that and then concentrate on the problems. That's what critics do." When talking about the issues of being labeled as an atheist, Sam Harris states that "It hobbles us in this discourse where we have to seem to kind of spread the light of criticism equally, in all directions, at all moments. I think we could, on any specific question, have a majority of religious people agree with us." Overall, this debate include a detailed and fascinating look at all facets of religion, whether it's true or not and if it's dangerous to the world.